Following the launch of Classic Marathon 1 & 2 earlier this summer, Classic Marathon Infinity is now available on Steam, meaning all three games in Bungie’s acclaimed first-person sci-fi shooter trilogy have now made it to Valve’s platform.
Classic Marathon Infinity, which has been released on Steam with Bungie’s blessing, comes from the team behind Aleph One – a fan-created engine based on the Marathon 2 source code. And as with the studio’s ports of Marathon and Marathon 2: Durandal
Classic Marathon Infinity features the complete 20-level Blood Tides of Lh’owon campaign, which brought the trilogy to a close when it released back in 1996. “Having defeated the Pfhor and reawakened the ancient remnants of the S’pht,” teases Marathon Infinity’s blurb, “the player now faces a world where friends become enemies and all is not what it seems…”
As in the original 1996 release, solo and co-op play is supported, but this Steam version also features optional widescreen HUD support, 3D filtering/perspective, positional audio, and 60+ fps interpolation, “just in case the original is too authentic”.
2024 marks 30 years since the original Marathon’s release, but beyond its anniversary celebrations, Bungie does, of course, have other reasons for keeping its classic series in the headlines. The studio announced it was reviving Marathon – albeit as a sci-fi PvP extraction shooter – last May. It was originally due to release this year, but it’s now expect to arrive sometime in 2025 following a leadership shakeup that has reportedly seen Valorant game director Joe Ziegler take control of the project.
Back in July, Bungie announced it was laying off 220 members of staff – approximately 17 percent of its total workforce – with CEO Pete Parsons blaming “rising costs of development and industry shifts as well as enduring economic conditions”. The news followed more than 100 job cuts at the studio last October, and was met with harsh criticism from current and former staff online, calling for Parsons to resign.